European wheat yields have recently stagnated in major production areas due to abiotic and biotic stresses caused by climate change forcing future wheat production to expand towards the Northern regions, therefore breeding climate-resilient wheat varieties is an important research task for the Baltic and Nordic countries to ensure safe and sustainable food systems.

The NOBAL wheat project established a spring wheat collection of 300 genotypes originating from Baltic states and Norway and tested its genetic plasticity and adaptation capacity in 12 diverse environments (3 seasons in 4 countries). The collection was genotyped with a 25K SNP array yielding 18,467 high-quality genetic markers to perform genome-wide association study (GWAS). Analysis revealed 18 consistent QTL for plant height, grain protein content, thousand kernel weight and plant earliness.

GWAS was further conducted on the disease data, and an in-depth analysis was done on the powdery mildew resistance, identifying a highly significant QTL on chromosome 3A providing race non-specific adult plant resistance under Nordic-Baltic field conditions. This QTL was further validated on an independent set of Norwegian spring wheat breeding lines and confirmed its promising use in resistance breeding.

Furthermore, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) were deployed weekly to facilitate fast acquisition of high-quality phenotypic data. Finally, superior genotypes identified in this study will be directly utilized in the breeding process of the climate-fit wheat varieties to secure yields and contribute to sustainable food production in the Nordic-Baltic region.